Heretofore, chemical production processes generally employed fluid flow as a means for introducing chemical reactants to relatively fixed catalyst pellets or to fibers coated with, the catalyst. Such catalyst pellets or fibers often fractured into particles, which deleteriously impacted processing efficiency. Not only can these particles damage processing equipment and interfere with reaction products, but ordinary environmental regulations require that they be filtered from a processing fluid prior to discharge into the environment. The fractured catalyst pellets must be replaced. Therefore, a method that avoids fracturing of catalyst materials would significantly improve the efficiency of chemical production processes.
Another problem relates to the transport rates of reactants and reaction products to and from the catalyst pellet's catalytic reaction sites wherein the catalyst pellets have dimensions ranging from a few microns to a few millimeters. Generally, chemical reactants reach a catalyst pellet's inner-surface area by traveling through the pellets' pores. However, as the size of a pellet increases, the length of its pores increases proportionally. Relatively large catalyst pellets can have pore lengths so great that all of their catalytic reaction sites are not utilized by the reactants.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,916,758 assigned on its face to The University of Akron, relates to a fibrous catalyst-immobilization system that can be employed for immobilizing catalysts that are subject to fluid flow within a chemical production process. The fibrous system is formed utilizing organic fiber forming material such as various polymers. The fibrous systems can be synthesized using electrospinning and the catalysts are secured in the fibers during the electrospinning process.